The new Chinese leadership has, over the last 18 months, shown itself to be very different from that of successive Post-1980 reformist administrations. The 'market reform' rhetoric is still there. The assertions about Communist Party supremacy and dislike of Western democratic values, are still there...

School meal programmes, no doubt, are a lifeline and shock absorber for millions in such situations. This is why the case of children dying in India's eastern state of Bihar as a result of contaminated meals, is such a tragedy.

Imagine walking into a minefield before realising you are in deep trouble and help is hours away. Picture yourself in the middle of a crowd that is fast turning into a mob. Visualise your colleague has been shot at by rebels and has a life-threatening bleeding wound.

This week Save the Children and Oxfam released a damning report about the failure of the international community to heed the warnings of the spreading nutritional crisis in East Africa quickly enough. This "dangerous delay" they say, cost lives.

The fact remains though that we need to talk about famine. Perhaps not in the technical UN-defined sense of the word. But in the dictionary sense of the word: extreme and general scarcity of food, as in a country or a large geographical area. With so many lives potentially at stake, now is not the time to dodge the issue.

The model for Somalia is Switzerland. Don't laugh! Political power in Switzerland lies in the cantons - the 26 proud self-governing communities. The state, such as it is, deals with international matters and national law.

ONE's new campaign ad is getting a lot of attention. Not all of it of the admiring kind. Yahoo's news pages brand it the "shocking F-word vid". In the UK, the folk who decide what is fit and proper content for TV ads are stewing over it.

From the tsunami in 2004 to the Japanese earthquake earlier this year, the world has a long-established system in which citizens of the world, and their governments, support each other in times of humanitarian emergency.

"There is more in the news this morning about shaving foam than about nutritional supplies for children who need their lives saved." This was the impassioned plea of David Bull, Executive Director of UNICEF UK